This poem is inspired by a real murder in the woods near where I live that happened back in 1919. It’s a difficult personal historical story to read about. It reads like it was a shockingly destructive relationship (and that’s a kind description) from both Henry and Lizzie and that was before her murdered her. How he committed the act was spectacularly horrid.

I’m not a big rhymer so I’m not entirely happy with this at all. I’m going to re-visit it again in the future and will probably do another version.

Ok I know I said I wasn’t going to post another handcrafted item post for a bit but I am struggling with a poem and I have a book review to write but that’s frustrating me too. So essentially I’m confessing that I’m annoying myself, which isn’t unusual and our little blog was feeling a bit empty. So as it is the season of good cheer and peace on earth I decided to pop Miss Muffet up for you to ponder on.

What has she got to do with peace on earth? I hear your brain whirring away. Well I shall tell you. You see that little arachnid sitting next to her, well there is no running away, there is no screaming, there is no bludgeoning…….there is harmony between girl and spider.

I watch a lot of YouTube and recently discovered Yuka’s Show and Tell I really enjoy watching her videos. There’s something calming and charmingly endearing about the way she presents herself and her stories on her videos. Anyway I came across the origami paper crane tutorial and started to watch as I usually would ready to listen to her stories. Then she began to tell the story of why origami cranes are so important to Japan, I’ve attached this NHK World article that talks about the history.

For me I felt a need to create 1000 cranes as a reminder to myself, sort of a meditation and to the respect of what a nation chose to do because they wanted peace. Our daily updates are going on the swarms and bee instagram here. Day 1 included a trial but every day we will create one each.

Ok so this is the last of the handcrafted items for a while before I clog the blogwaves up with too much of one flavour. What a confusing collection of a shadow box we have here. The fawn was a gift from Bee and I felt the need to make a quick home for it.

You may recall me mention before that I’m a multi-doer procrastinator. Well this was in my transitional period when I was trying to complete things so this was a slapdash job but I kind of like it’s crappy look and the atmosphere that came out of it and for this reason I will never make a ‘better’ one. Atmosphere is everything.

The moon was made from air-drying clay. Don’t do it, invest in the oven bake varieties. The tree was a string and wire dream of creating my own bottle brush trees, hundreds of them. Balls to that, it took an age to make four. If I ever save up enough patience then I might try for my forest.

p.s. the little glass fox turned up about three months ago and so I moved him in with the fawn. Yes he is meant to be a fox.